Getting the flavour of…

A dip with sharks in Cornwall British divers travel the globe to swim with sharks, but you can do it off the coast of Cornwall too – and not just with tiddlers, says James Stewart in The Sunday Times. Between June and November, blue sharks hunt mackerel and squid there, and the snorkelling tour operator Charles Hood has spent eight years working out how to find them. At his favourite spot, an hour by boat from Penzance harbour, divers usually get to swim with several at once. It’s terrifying at first: they’re often more than 6ft long and curious, swimming so close you can see their teeth. But they are not aggressive to humans, and their sheer beauty is mesmerising – not only their “hydrodynamic design”, but their gorgeous colours too, “from charcoal to iridescent steel-blue to dusky lavender”. The trip costs £840 for up to five people (07712-622440; charleshood.com). British Columbia by jeep If you want a “really wild” road trip, “overlanding” in a jeep through British Columbia’s backcountry is the way to go, says Aaron Millar in The Guardian. Doing so is now easy thanks to a new Vancouverbased company, Hastings Overland. The jeeps it hires out not only have slide-out kitchens in their boots, but three-person, fold-out tents on their roofs, which sit about 8ft above the ground (“a handy height in grizzly country”). And they come with excellent guides to remote campsites and exciting places to discover. The highlight of our trip was the Kootenay Rockies, a little-visited “fairy-tale” region of sharp granite peaks and “shimmering” blue lakes, where highlights include the huge but practically deserted Wilson Creek Falls and the “natural soaking pools” at Halfway Hot Springs. Jeeps cost from $285 a night in summer (00 1 250 893 6073, hastingsoverland.com).

Gordon Bennett’s Riviera gem Midway between Nice and Monaco, Beaulieu-sur-mer is one of the most unspoilt corners of the Côte d’azur, says Lanie Goodman in Condé Nast Traveller. It was beloved of Queen Victoria and other 19th century grandees, but it was James Gordon Bennett, the American newspaper proprietor (whose name survives as a “general expletive” thanks to his “wacky” antics) who put it on the map. Bennett paved roads, launched car races, kept a cow on his yacht and hosted dinners that were the talk of the Riviera. Stay if you can at La Réserve, the “opulent” villa hotel, swim from La Petite Afrique beach and visit the Villa Kérylos museum, a belle époque replica of an ancient Greek mansion. La Réserve (00 33 4 93 01 00 01, reserve beaulieu.com) has doubles from s190 b&b.